The BBC’s decision to back down and allow Gary Lineker to return to presenting is a welcome conclusion to a weekend of extreme silliness. In withdrawing the Match of the Day presenter from the airwaves over a crass and stupid tweet in which Lineker compared the government’s rhetoric on illegal migration to that of 1930s Germany, the Corporation escalated a minor skirmish into an all-out war, a war it could not win.
It’s the Tories, not Gary Lineker, who compel you to fund his £1.35 million fee
Lineker is a highly opinionated chap whose opinions mostly stand in opposition to the Tory party and right-of-centre ways of thinking. His own views aren’t all that left-of-centre, just the usual midwit progressivism that gets status-hungry blue-ticks retweeting like crazy. But they have caused the BBC problems in the past, with an investigation finding his 2022 tweet about Russian donations to the Tory party to be in breach of social media and impartiality guidelines.
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